Waves of Glory Page 7

  “Not so easy, Boche bastard,” Randolph muttered, pulling back gently on the stick and ignoring the antiaircraft fire that was exploding far overhead. “Those buggers will never learn to cut their fuses,” he growled to himself.

  Immediately, glowing firebrands arced toward him and fell off beneath the fuselage. Tracers! Six hundred yards. Too far!

  With the top speed of the Rumpler only ninety miles per hour and the airspeed of the diving Nieuport at least an incredible 130 miles per hour, the range closed quickly. The Englishman tingled his thumb over the red button but held his fire, the Boche growing in his sights. A hammer drummed on the scout. Canvas tipped from the upper tight wing and bits and tatters streamed. The gunner was good. Very good.

  The Rumpler filled both rings. Two hundred yards. Zero deflection. Now! Higgins jammed the red button hard. The airframe bucked and vibrated as the Vickers stuttered to life. Firing five hundred rounds of ball a minute and with every fourth round a tracer, to the major the machine gun appeared to be squirting the target like a garden hose loaded with glowing fireflies. With the button held down for a long five-second burst, the breechblock devoured cartridges like a hungry jackal, ammo-belt jerking and racing up from the ammunition tank to the tight side of the block where it vanished, reappearing empty on the left side, spewing brass shells against the guards then bouncing them into the slipstream like glistening yellow confetti.

  He scored. Ripped fabric streamed from the German’s elevators and dust and splinters streaked and puffed from the fuselage, exposing ribs and wire stays. A hundred yards. Eighty yards. Firing short bursts, cooling his gun, which would jam if held open too long. Desperate to throw off the Boche’s aim, he kicked full rudder and skidded from side to side in the flat turns that only the Nieuport 17 was capable of, feeling the wings flex at the strain and hearing the wires pop and hum with changing tension. But the Hun gunner was a good shot, Randolph’s stick and rudder bar vibrating as slugs pockmarked his tail. Suddenly, the Pambellum fell silent and the observer stood straight up, frantically changing drums.

  Centering his controls, the major brought the enemy back into the gun sight. Slightly above and no more than fifteen yards behind, Randolph had his killing angle. He pressed the button. Struck by a half-dozen .303 rounds, the observer jerked straight up, flinging his arms out like a crucified martyr, spurting blood from his ripped chest and throat. A fine red mist streaked in the slipstream, coating the scout’s windshield and Randolph’s goggles and layering his cheeks with a thin red patina. Then the observer tumbled over the side, held in only by his belt loosely like a broken rag doll.

  Desperately, the German pilot dove toward the ground, but a storm of tracers from the British trenches flattened his dive. Hungrily, the pursuit plane clung to his tail as if attached by a cable, closing the range to not less than eight yards as the two planes roared over no-man’s-land. Randolph fired, but the German jinked out of his gun sight, observer flopping from side to side, wind-whipped arms flailing over his head like a supplicant in a frenzy of prayer, staining the fuselage with blood and gore.

  More blood splattered on Randolph, obscuring his vision. Cursing, the Englishman pushed up his goggles and wiped his windshield with the back of his glove. He had never been this close to the enemy. In fact, he was so close to the Rumpler he could feel the backwash from its propeller. With a little left rudder, he moved to the side, out of the turbulence.

  The pilot turned and faced Randolph. His goggles were up showing haunted blue eyes in the smooth face of a boy not more than twenty. Thin lips were set in a slack jaw that trembled. He needed a shave, blond whiskers glistening on cheeks and chin. Randolph hated the enemy but disliked killing helpless men. Pulling even closer, he extended a palm backward, toward the British lines. The boy shook his head from side to side and then pushed the Rumpler into a dive.

  “Fool! Bloody fool!” Higgins spat, half rolling in pursuit. “You have no chance!” Just as the Englishman centered the pilot’s head in his ring sight, the German glanced fearfully over his shoulder. At a range of no more than twenty feet, Randolph fired only four rounds. Every ball hit, hammer blows tearing the top of the boy’s head off, sending a gray red gout of blood, brains, shattered skull, and torn leather into the slipstream. Instantly, the observation plane fell off on its left wing, beginning its final twisting plunge.

  Fascinated, Randolph watched as its top wing ripped off at five hundred feet and then its lower wing folded up like wet cardboard and tore away and fluttered behind, the doomed plane plummeting into the shell holes as if an alchemist had turned it to lead. There was an explosion and greasy black smoke billowed from the grave.

  Tracers. Explosions. Thirty-seven millimeter and seventy-seven millimeter. He was over the German lines. Pulling back on the stick and kicking the rudder bar, the major turned for his lines, clawing for altitude. Tracers fell off below, but black and brown puffs of archie splotched the sky all around like a virulent pox. Half rolling, Randolph brought the stick back between his knees to his stomach, diving toward no-man’s-land and away from the enraged gunners. Then another half roll and he leveled off, skimming a few feet over the shell holes. He sighed. Friendly trenches were ahead and he was well out of range of archie. High overhead he saw Reed, circling protectively.

  Smiling, Major Randolph Higgins pulled back on the stick and turned toward home.

  When Randolph arrived over Number Five Squadron’s aerodrome—a French farm midway between Douve and Bailleul—it was early afternoon and a fresh northerly breeze had stiffened the T-shaped windvane flying from the peak of the barn so that the T pointed to the south. Circling counterclockwise at eight hundred feet and still feeling the exhilaration of the kill—the raptures of fighting madness in which the threat of death or hideous injury was of no consequence—Randolph Higgins chuckled as he stared down. An aerodrome, indeed? A farmhouse for headquarters and his billet and officers’ mess, the barn and three canvas-covered, wooden-framed Bessonneau hangars, three long buildings also of flimsy construction serving as barracks for the fourteen pilots and fifty-seven ground crew and two crisscrossing runways in what had been a wheat field. Twelve miles behind the front, there were no trenches snaking below through leprous and pockmarked earth like loathsome reptiles. Instead, the entire green landscape was free of the pox of war—bountiful fields forming a mosaic of a dozen shades of green interspersed with the dark brown of ploughed fields and separated by long rows of poplars, oak, and hedgerows.

  Although Randolph had wiped his windshield vigorously with his glove, the cold of the high altitudes had coagulated and stiffened the gore splattered on the glass and his attempts had only smeared the mess across his vision. Now in the warmth of low altitude, the hardened blood softened and sagged in rivulets like warm butter. A swipe with his glove cleared enough of the windshield to satisfy the major. Glancing at the glove, his high spirits were replaced by a sick empty feeling; the thickening blood was speckled with gray bits of brains and white splinters of bone. Frantically, he banged and rubbed the otter skin against the doped canvas of the fuselage. He had killed many men but never this close; never close enough to smear his aircraft with their bloody hash. C’est la guerre ran through his mind. He shrugged. Then remembering more men were shot down on their final approach on their own aerodrome than in any other situation, he made a final search of the sky. He saw nothing.

  Pushing gently on the stick and balancing with left rudder, he banked to the east while Reed made his approach. Within minutes, his companion’s Nieuport had cleared the row of poplars and stone wall to the south and settled down on the runway. Ground crewmen rushed to the aircraft like courtiers to a queen and pushed the little scout toward one of the hangars. A last glance at the wind sock and Higgins circled south of the field and made his approach. Reducing power, the engine’s beat dwindled to a burbling murmur and the little biplane fluttered and sailed to the left as the loss in torque changed the balance of the
aircraft. A little right rudder corrected and with the throttle cut to the last notch, the wind soughed and hummed through the struts and wires like the breeze off the channel whipping the great oaks of Fenwyck. Gliding over the poplars, the ground rushed up and Randolph could see the individual bent stubble of the mined wheat beneath him. A gentle pull on the stick leveled the cowl with the horizon as he felt first his wheels and then his tail skid touch down in a perfect three-point landing. Without brakes, the Nieuport rolled freely toward the hangars but began to stop far short. Gunning his engine in short blasts, vibrating and wings rocking slightly from side to side, the exhaust ports fired blue clouds of burned petrol and castor oil into the clean air. Castor oil fumes gave a man diarrhea. He turned his head. Held his breath. Cursed as he taxied toward the hard-packed earth tarmac and the ground crewmen racing out to meet him.

  Finally, only a few feet from the converted barn, Randolph turned off the ignition and the wooden propeller stopped stiffly and the fumes were whipped away. As usual, Higgins was overwhelmed by the lack of noise: the engine’s roar, propeller biting into the air, slipstream, humming wires and struts, replaced by a silence so sweet it poured like nectar against his eardrums. Unsnapping his safety belt, he sagged back in the wicker seat for a moment, the same inevitable thought that flashed from his mind at the end of every patrol filling his consciousness: The patrol’s over and I’m alive, he assured himself over and over.

  As he pushed down hard on the combing, stepped out to the wing, and then lowered himself to the ground, he heard a robin. Turning quickly, he caught a glimpse of a pair of red-breasted birds racing over the strip toward the apple orchard to the east. “Not all birds kill each other,” he muttered to himself.

  “Good Lord, sir,” a familiar voice said. “You brought part of the Boche back with you.”

  Randolph smiled at chief mechanic William Cochran, a short, round, white-haired, ruddy-faced Irishman with the twinkling eyes of a leprechaun. And, indeed, he was mischievous, known for his elaborate jokes and storied Saturday night drinking bouts that inevitably left the other four members of his ground crew prostrate while Cochran continued drinking and singing, his whiskey-addled baritone strident enough to fill Westminster booming through the canvas of his tent. Randolph moved to the front of the scout plane and stared at the Le Rhone with the sergeant. A half dozen ground crewmen clad in green, grease-stained overalls gathered around and stared at the engine. The propeller boss, cylinder cooling fins, front of the crankcase, cowl, and the leading edges of the wings were speckled with gore. Even the front of the fuselage and parts of the propeller were tinted scarlet as if the plane had been flown through a red fog. The rotten smell of death already hung in a heavy cloud. “No one can argue with this kill, sir. You brought the confirmation home with you.” The sergeant raised an eyebrow. “Your fifth, Major. If we were Frogs, you’d be an ace.”

  Randolph felt his stomach knot and sour gorge rise. “Clean it up, Sergeant,” he said curtly, turning to the farmhouse.

  “Yes, sir.” And then to the ground crew, “You heard the major, step lively, men!” Quickly, crewmen grasped wings and wheel struts and began pushing the scout plane into the barn.

  As Randolph approached the farmhouse, he passed the ready-alert room—a small tent with a wooden floor, furnished with a table made of two boxes and a pair of planks, two field cots, four stools, and an oil lamp. Four young pilots in full flight kit had interrupted their card game long enough to form a ragged line in front of the tent. Smiling as they saluted casually, they shouted, “Congratulations on your fifth, sir.”

  The major answered their salutes and muttered his thanks and, “Carry on, men, carry on,” as he reached for the wrought-iron handle on the heavy oak door.

  The farmhouse was at least two hundred years old. Built of stone and heavy oak timbers, it was large and had obviously belonged to a prosperous family. Entering the main room, which was his office, Randolph Higgins was greeted by three men: Lieutenant David A. Reed, who had already stripped off his flight clothes and was seated on a battered couch sipping a whiskey, squadron clerk Corporal Harvey Longacre, a bright young Welshman from Pembrokeshire, who was typing a report at an old sideboard that served as his desk. The third man was Randolph’s batman, Sergeant Major Johnathan York, who approached Randolph with a glass in one hand and a bottle in the other.

  Despite the discomfort of layered flight clothes and a desire to be free of them, Randolph dropped his helmet, goggles, and otter-skin gauntlets on a box that served as a table and moved to York, who extended him a dram of Johnnie Walker. Wordlessly, the major downed the fiery liquor with a single toss of his head and extended the glass. Quickly, York recharged the glass and Randolph sipped a mouthful, this time swirling it and working it around his teeth and gums, enjoying the sting and prickle and savoring the flavor before swallowing it. Slowly, he felt himself begin to unknot as the heat hit his empty stomach and the charge of alcohol coursed through his bloodstream.

  “Congratulations on your fifth kill, sir,” Sergeant Major York said in his scratchy, breathless voice. A small middle-aged man, his face was scored and riven by crags and deep lines of terrible suffering etched in 1914 on the banks of the Mons Canal when, as a member of the “Old Contemptibles,” he had taken an Uhlan’s lance in the shoulder—a murderous thrust that had punctured his windpipe and broken his clavicle and three ribs. A career soldier, as were all 125,000 members of the B.E.F. at the outbreak of war, and a veteran of fighting in India and Africa, he refused to die and turned his back on a discharge. Suffering a partial loss of his larynx and muscle strength in his left arm, he applied for any duty available. Eagerly, he accepted an assignment to the R.F.C. as a batman. He was conscientious, attentive, and loyal, anticipating his officer’s needs and exercising the discretion and tact of a true professional. Randolph considered him irreplaceable.

  Without a word, Randolph turned and he felt York’s hands pull the skirtless leather coat from his shoulders. Then the fleece-lined flying jacket, the heavy Royal Navy sweater followed by the combinaison and two cable-stitched jerseys. Sighing with relief, Randolph flexed his arms under his tunic and loosened his collar. Even the warm afternoon air felt cool next to his skin. Seized by sudden weariness and relaxed by the alcohol, he sagged into a chair behind his desk—a battered old commode with a score of pigeon holes requisitioned from the post office at Bailleul.

  Reed said, “Good show, old man. You didn’t waste any ammo.”

  Nodding, Randolph studied Reed over his glass. The son of a wealthy importer, Lieutenant David A. Reed was a tall, slender young man with yellow hair like ripe wheat, flawless white skin, and the clear blue eyes of a poet or a killer. And indeed, he was both. A graduate of Eaton, he had acquired a taste for Chaucer, Spenser, Swift, Pope, Bacon, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Browning. At the same time, he had become known for his violence on the playing fields. His room was jammed with books and athletic trophies. Two of the four German planes he had shot down—a Fokker Eindecker and a Halberstadt D-2—had fallen behind British lines. He had ripped the identifying numbers from the rudder of one and the Maltese cross from a wing of the other and the mementos hung from his wall, covering his bookcases.

  Randolph said, “With you up there”—he gestured skyward—”I don’t worry about a Hun sticking his Spandau up my arse.”

  The laughter that filled the room was interrupted by the sounds of a motor car pulling up in front of the farmhouse. Immediately, a spit-and-polish captain smelling of Kiwi polish and Brasso stepped haughtily through the door and walked to the center of the room where he clicked his heels grandly like an actor on the stage of the Old Vic. His polished boots and Sam Browne belt, glowing brass buttons and swagger stick tucked under his right arm all spoke of “staff.” Randolph recognized Captain Wilfrid Freeman, a new member of General Neville Blair’s staff. Gripped by the revulsion all fighting men feel toward rear echelon personnel, Randolph eyed the newcomer
over his glass, not offering Freeman a drink—not even a chair. Reed and Longacre came to their feet in a mockery of attention and then slouched back in their chairs.

  “I’m Captain Wilfrid Freeman,” the staff officer said in a high-pitched, almost effeminate voice.

  “I know. We met,” Randolph said. “I’m Major Randolph Higgins.

  “I’m from Division.”

  “I know that, too.”

  Freeman stared at the gore-splattered gloves, helmet, and goggles, casually thrown on the box. His face blanched and for the first time his aplomb appeared ruffled. “You’re wounded,” he sputtered. Randolph and Reed both chuckled humorlessly.

  “No,” Randolph said. “I brought a bit of a Hun back with me.”

  “Good Lord,” Freeman said, regaining composure. “You get that close? We should issue you grappling hooks and cutlasses directly, by Jove.” The captain chuckled at his own wit, but no one shared the humor.

  “You should try it,” Randolph said matter-of-factly. “It’s jolly good fun.”

  “That’s not necessary,” the captain bristled. “I have volunteered repeatedly. . .”

  “I’m sure you have,” Randolph interrupted. “But what brings a member of Division here? There must be serious business afoot.” He grinned slyly at Reed, who raised his glass in response.

  Uneasily, Freeman pulled a document from his pocket. Silently, he glanced at it and then looked up at Randolph, jaw working. He had the look of a man who wanted very much to be somewhere else. “It’s your brother, Lieutenant Geoffry Higgins. . . Ah, the general wanted to—ah. . .”